The Department of Sciences and Technology (Decit) of the Brazilian Government has played a vital role in drafting of the National Policy for Biologic Medicines. Decit has provided methodological support to the working group, conducting a rapid review and a rapid evidence synthesis to subsidize decisions and recommendations.

We used the Methodological Guidelines for the Elaboration of Evidence Synthesis for Health Policies, which is a product of our own team, based on the SUPporting POlicy relevant Reviews and Trials (SUPPORT) Tools for evidence-informed health Policymaking.

The Decit team participated in the key steps to develop an evidence-informed policy. Our product, “Barriers to Access to Biologic Products: a Rapid Review” was used for the prioritization of health problems and the description of the problem. We then proceeded to the evidence synthesis planning and definition of the research question from an acronym. Together with the coordination of the working group, we decided to tackle the problem of interchangeability of biologic products motivated solely by economic factors in a synthesis of policy evidence. Our evidence synthesis went so far as to describe policy options. The working group used this product to inform a Policy Dialog.

This was the first time that the Decit team provided hands-on methodological assistance the development of a health policy. Not all steps recommended in the SUPPORT Tools were feasible due to time restraints. We observed that rapid evidence synthesis products were helpful to inform decision-making.